Committer Members

Before you can become a Committer Member of the Eclipse Foundation,
you must first become a Committer. While these things may sound
similar, they are actually quite different.

Committers are those people who have write
access to the source repositories and other content on the Eclipse
Foundation's website. A good description can be found in Exhibit D
of the Eclipse
Membership Agreement: "In order for an individual to
become a Committer, another Committer for the project (or
component) must nominate that individual. Once an individual is
nominated, the existing Committers for the project (or component)
will vote using the process and rules established in the
project’s corresponding Charter. When a new project is
started, the corresponding PMC will nominate an initial set of
Committers for approval by the Executive Director (or his
delegates). Becoming a Committer is a privilege that is earned by
contributing and showing discipline and good judgment. It is a
responsibility that should be neither given nor taken lightly."

Read the "Becoming a Committer" section below
for more details.

Committer Members are those Committers who
decide to join the Eclipse Foundation as Members. Note that people
who work for a Member company who are Committers do not need to join
as individual Committer Members. They already have all of the rights
and privileges of a Committer Member. It is also important to
understand that you do not have to join the Foundation as a
Committer Member to be a Committer.

One of the important
benefits of becoming a Committer Member is that you are eligible to
vote in the elections for the Committer Representatives on the
Eclipse Board of Directors.

Becoming a Committer

If you are interested in becoming a Committer at Eclipse, the first
and most important question is which project do you want to contribute
to?

There are many projects; you should
start with the project that is the most interesting and most
exciting to you.

Second, a few operational details:

Please note that the forums
are a good place to make contact with a project. To request a
Eclipse Foundation password to post on the forums, report bugs and enter feature requests, please
go to our account
creation form.

We distinguish between two similar sounding, and related,
organizations: the Eclipse Foundation is a member-funded
not-for-profit corporation that supports the Eclipse Open Source
Projects. The Projects are the open source community where the
development happens. This distinction is important because you can
be an active developer and contributor to the open source Projects
without being a "member" of the Eclipse Foundation. (Most
of our non-affiliated open source committers are also members of the
Foundation, but it is not a requirement.) There is no cost to being
an individual member of the Foundation.

Third, about becoming a developer and committer on the Eclipse Open
Projects:

Becoming a Committer at Eclipse is a multi-stage process. The
basic rule is that all new committers are voted in by the existing
committers on a project. Similar to other open source communities,
we operate as a meritocracy....which among other things translates
to mean that you have to prove your abilities before you can become
a committer.

The best way to start contributing to Eclipse is to start with
well-formed bug reports and feature requests for project(s) that you
are primarily interested in. Build a good reputation with the
existing committers on a project. Over time, start proposing code
enhancements and volunteer time to the project. Then once you have
demonstrated your skills to the existing team, ask a current project
committer to sponsor you as a committer. The election process is
defined in each top-level project's charter.